~ Just another WordPress.com weblog

Category Archives: IVF

This is a chart of ONLY successful pregnancies (determined by the fact that they reached no less than 8 weeks gestation and had a heart beat) that ONLY 36 year old women had–apparently as we get older, on average, we have to have a higher beta per DPO than when we are younger for it to be a healthy pregnancy.

One can go on to have a healthy take home baby if you are 36 and its lower than what is reported here-however, the further away from the number below, the far less likely you are to have a healthy pregnancy on board.

This is why I wanted 150. Just slighter higher than the median beta number reported for my age at 14dpo. Square in the middle, and not in the lower levels that have me trapped in the heart wrenching, knowing miscarriage is inevitable, and that this is not my baby either, low and slow rising beta hell.

I do not get to be normal today.

My beta is not even 100 even though there was a line on the urine hCG test that claimed I was at 100.

I’m not even at 75.

I’m not even at 50.

49 ladies and gentleman. 40 fucking 9.

I am now squarely situated back in the same damn place I was last August- Low and Slow Rising Beta Hell-only with lots more blood and the knowledge that these blasts were boys and they were perfect.

*I’m going to go ahead and turn off the comments on this post, not because I don’t love you, but because sometimes I just need to*

that always morphs into the second most fun game ever, “Slow and Low Rising Beta Limbo hell” that then turns into all of Brooke’s doctors thinking she has an ectopic, quickly followed by Brooke miscarrying while her house is full of relatives visiting.

Did I tell you it’s my birthday on Wednesday? This week is going to be AMAZEBALLS!!!

Here’s the original photo line up-in all fairness this game began yesterday at 5 days past a 5 day transfer (10 dpo), there was the faintest of lines that both me and hubby could see so I know I’m not nuts.

Today’s line (11dpo) or 6 days past a 5 day transfer is slightly more noticeable but still a very SMALL WEAK POSITITVE.

And to help you see what we can see, here’s the tweaked version of that line up:

As soon as Dr. P had me prepped for receiving our FiscaBoyBlasts he looked over his shoulder and called to the embryologist to bring them out of the incubator-then he gave my leg a firm squeeze as she was walking towards us and said…

“Its time for these boys to meet their mommy.”

And then my breath caught in my throat and my eyes filled with tears as I thought…

“That is exactly what I NEED to hear in 37 weeks. Please , oh please don’t let this be the only time I ever hear those words while laying in a hospital gown with a team of people staring at my gaping vagina.”

We’ve been told we have perfect textbook looking, grade A no fragmentation Day 3 embryos (x 4) and textbook perfect looking expanded Day 5 blastocytes (x2). We’ve transferred all 6 of those supposedly perfect blasts and embryos over three attempts only to end up with 1 chemical pregnancy.

My last RE said its been a long time since she’s seen anyone make such perfect embryos and blasts during multiple IVF cycles. She also said she’s never seen someone make this type of quality (based visually of course) to find out that they don’t make any chromosomally normally embryos. She said she didn’t believe I had an egg quality issue at all. She also didn’t believe I had an immune issue causing my miscarraiges-or apparently any one for that matter as they don’t actually exist.

My current RE thought I would make absolutely no chromosomally normal embryos. He feels comfortable treating me as if I have an APA issue due to a single borderline test result and my complete insistance upon steriods and lovenox but if he had his way, I wouldn’t be on either of them-just a baby aspirin. He was sure given my history of 5 miscarriages that I had a severe egg quality issue causing this.

I said I thought if I could get 8 embryos that I was certain I would make no less than 2 normal embryos. I keep saying that I think there is something wrong with my body that is preventing normal and even slightly abnormal pregnancies from even COMPLETING implantation.

She was part right and mostly wrong.

He was all wrong (but I still love him).

And so far I was very right and hoping that the steriods, double dose of progesterone, claritin, prepcid, baby aspirin and Lovenox that I’m currently hopped up on proves the rest of my thoughts wrong.

Dr. P. ended up biopsying the 3 celled embryo anyways as he felt it wasn’t going to make it to day 5 so might as well lose it to science than natural causes. Out of 8 embryos tested-

4 were not normal

2 were very not normal

2 were perfect…

(click to enlarge)

When we got the news that we did indeed have 2 normal blasts-I did indeed freak out mentally the rest of the ride down to NJ because I don’t have any faith that the drugs I am on will stop my crazy ass UOD from killing these 2 perfect blasts. The only thought that has prevented me from a full on panic since learning this news was this…

perhaps…just maybe…my best LOOKING embryos aren’t my normal ones?? And perhaps the drugs I am currently hopped up on will stop the mass murdering UOD in her tracks??

Is it possible that Lizzie selected the best 2 looking embryos out of 4 last October only to select 2 abnormal embryos and freeze the 2 healthy ones-which didn’t handle the shitty antiquated BWH freeze/thaw process and were only 2 and 4 cells at time of transfer-and thus too damaged to propagate?

Is it possible that the same thing happened again during our blast transfer in August? We had 4 blasts on day 5 and selected again to transfer the 2 best LOOKING and then discard the others because we didn’t want to freeze our blasts because they hadn’t been genetically tested.

So to try to set my mind at ease-I asked Dr. P when we arrived in NJ–if he didn’t have that report telling him which blasts to transfer-could he look at our blasts right now and tell me which 2 he would transfer based solely on just LOOKING at them?

We transferred embryos #1 and #3 because the genetics report told us they were normal.

Without the CGH testing report he would have transferred embryo #2 and #7 because they were fully hatched blasts and therefore had a higher score than the 2 normal ones which had just started to hatch.

Please let the reason our previous 3 Assisted Reproductive Therapies have failed to bring me a take home baby be because my best looking blasts and embryos aren’t my normal ones. And while I try to focus on that being the reason that I’m not half way to healthy take home baby right now, I will try to forget about the other 4 natural cycle miscarriages that we can’t explain why they didn’t go to term (or at least a frickin heart beat) either.

I find myself simultaneously hoping that we have a couple normal embryos out of the 7 tested and then immediately freaking the eff out at the thought that we clearly make some normal babies-so that is not the sole reason for 5 back to back peri-implantation pregnancy losses.

I have to admit-I’ve never been able to buy the idea that we make babies that are so abnormal that they aren’t even capable of fully implanting…x5…especially since Ava had no issue implanting, and her chromosomes were perfect and I am fully aware of how many women are forced to terminate pregnancies in the second trimester due to fatal chromosome issues or those who decide to carry to term a baby with a chromosome issue. Its a lot. Since our pregnancy with Ava, we have NEVER made it to a gestational sac, never mind heart beat. We never get above 60 for a beta hCG. I simply just don’t believe that the number of chromosomes has anything to do with all of these losses-and well that’s why this whole thing sucks.

NOTHING has been done to stop my uterus from killing another pregnancy as my immune system and body has been deemed completely normal (GAG!) by every possible means of testing. There are no more tests to run which means if there is a normal blast in the fisca 7 that is transferred to my UOD on Tuesday-and I miscarry a chromosomally sound blastocyte-then that is it-game over. Brooke never gets to carry her own baby.

Granted if that’s the case, we have an answer. My body is fucked up, and we will never know why its fucked up when clearly it worked once before-so it’s a really lousy ambiguous answer that ends my dream of carrying to term a healthy take home baby…but not necessarily the dream of having biological off spring as we will know in 24 hours if we do make some good babies.

So with a shit ton of money, and the same amount of luck we might be able to buy what every other person around here gets for free-a healthy take home baby-

IF the woman who offered to be our surrogate will still be willing to do so.

IF she pass all of the crazy requirements.

IF her husband passes all of his crazy requirements.

IF they are all on board with driving 6 hours for treatments etc, etc, etc

I have also begun to think about the void that will be there a week from Wednesday if we do have something normal to transfer tomorrow and I don’t get pregnant from this cycle, especially if we have no frozen normal blasts in which to try again. Until we achieve a pregnancy with a normal blast-we can’t really rule anything out…which means another fresh IVF cycle, with more testing, waiting and transferring to get the answers we need.

Dr. P: I said, you’ve got 8 embryos cooking away right now. One 3 cell, two with 7 cells and the other 5 embryos are between 9 and 11 cells.

me: Wait I dont understand. I thought we only had 6 on Friday?

Dr. P: You did only have 6 fertilized embryos on Friday, but we continue to culture all of your ICSI’d eggs and fertilized embryos because sometimes this happens.

me: So it sounds like we have 7 embryos that meet biopsy criteria, so I am assuming that is what you are suggesting-biopsy the 7 and send them out for CGH testing?

Dr.P: Yes absolutely. We will keep culturing all 8 embryos, but we can’t biopsy the 3 celled one without the risk of damaging it, so we will just try to get it to blastocyte stage. However, I am confident that with a pool of 7 testable embryos that you will have the answers you are looking for from this cycle. We will get the results on Tuesday morning and will call you as soon as they come in, but tentatively plan for a Tuesday afternoon transfer.

Some time tomorrow we will get a call from Dr. P and he will tell us (based on the number and quality of the remaining embryos) if we are going to attempt to move forward with testing and transferring on Tuesday or if we don’t have enough remaining to do so, and instead will biopsy and freeze what we have from this cycle and add it to a future cycle.